The Tooth Tattoo

A Peter Diamond Mystery

Peter Diamond, head of Bath’s CID, takes a city break in Vienna, where his favourite film, The Third Man, was set, but everything goes wrong and his companion Paloma calls a halt to their relationship.

Meanwhile, strange things are happening to jobbing musician Mel Farran, who finds himself scouted by methods closer to the spy world than the concert platform. The chance of joining a once-famous string quartet in a residency at Bath Spa University is too tempting for Mel to refuse.

Then a body is found in the city canal, and the only clue to the dead woman’s identity is the tattoo of a music note on one of her teeth. For Diamond, who wouldn’t know a Stradivarius from a French horn, the investigation is his most demanding ever. Three mysterious deaths need to be probed while his own personal life is in free fall.

The Tooth Tattoo In The Washington Post
Patrick Andersen, reviewing The Tooth Tattoo for The Washington Post, said: “Lovesey has won many prizes for his crime fiction; we expect fine writing and devilish plots from him. But the wonder of this novel is how deep he carries us into the world of a string quartet. He knows the music, and he makes clear its beauty, its challenges and the passions it arouses in both musicians and their audiences.”
You can also read the full Washington Post review of The Tooth Tattoo.

The New York Times (Marilyn Stasio):
“For want of a better term, Peter Lovesey’s novels about Peter Diamond, the chief of detectves in the historic English city of Bath, are designated as police procedurals. But these erudite and wondrously witty books are unlike any police procedural you’ve ever read. THE TOOTH TATTOO is a case in point. Of course there’s a murder to be solved – a curious one, involving a young Japanese music lover who has come to Bath in hopes of hearing a celebrated string quartet known as the Staccati. But for the most part, the murder investigation provides the structural framework for a group portrait of the eccentric members of this captivating ensemble and the music they play with such rapturous devotion.

Lovesey’s droll humor is on ample display as the members of Diamond’s investigative team poach ideas from “CSI” and tease their gloomy chief for behaving like the depressive Scandinavian policemen in popular fiction (There are also inside jokes for the musically minded like the one about Odessa being the source of all the world’s great string players). Even the murder investigation is fun, but in its own peculiar way; but for death-defying thrills, nothing quite compares to the Staccati swinging into Beethoven’s Quartet in C sharp minor.”

And from The Daily Mail (Barry Turner):CLASSIC CRIME
“I must resist saying Peter Lovesey is at the peak of his game since, judging by past experience, he will soon produce another book that is even better than THE TOOTH TATTOO. Let it suffice to say that this is one of his best.

For his latest outing, the thoroughly unpretentious Peter Diamond of Bath CID finds himself adrift in the world of classical music. What is the link between members of a highly regarded strong quartet and he death of a Japanese student who had come to Bath to hear them play? . . . Vivid characterisation and convincing dialogue confirm Lovesey’s reputation as a master storyteller.”